Guild Wars 2

Pretty standard, but I think the in game LFG tool should be here soon.
So I would just like to make a quick suggestion on how you should make it.

Rating

Initially everybody for the first month or so should be give a rating.

A number based, star rating or grade. something that only the game would track. maybe on the leader boards you could see where you rank in the world. This should go up and down depending on the dungeons you do.

Your score should be based on:
Speed (Time to complete dungeon)

Deaths- you get +2 if you are the first to die, +1 if you are second, +1 if you are third, and so on. So if you die first, get rezzed and die again you would have a +3 on your death counter The last 2 people to die in a wipe would not receive this penalty

Last man standing awards (can only be if you were in combat)

Rezzing others in dungeon

leaving early penalty

So based on the grade system A-F if you did one run got an A, an another got part way through and left, got a B and then a D. Your overall rank would be a C. You would be matched with players of a C grade for your dungeons until you average climbed.

You could be matched with players either side or your rank for quicker Q’s.

Overall it would be a great system for deciding ranks. You could have achieves for it.

Also your rank should be for each path and dungeon. and you should have an overall rank for doing random dungeon runs.

So you could have A for CoF p1 but still average C for CoF because you ignored other paths.
Then your overall rank for Rank would be the average of all the dungeons(not their paths)

This rating system should be enough to accommodate different player groups. also people would know they are grouped with similar level people. The system wouldn’t allow people of rank F in a group with rank A.

A side suggestion would be to add a Player of the instance achieve this would be for the player that matched the criteria the best. For example, most rez’s most healing given out, most time alive, least deaths and last man standing bonuses.

Dungeon difficulty curves

With the dungeon tool you should add a harder modes for dungeons and challenges. Each challenge gives you a multiplier for token drops, increases magic and gold find and also makes the dungeon harder. (make it significant as well)
5 challenges per dungeons or 5 ranks of dungeon difficulty.

This is how I would rank dungeons.

Rank 1: Mobs have 10% more Health and Damage, spawn 5% more mobs. Tokens, MF and gold increased by 50%

Rank 2: Mobs have 20% more health and damage spawns 10% more mobs. Tokens, MF and gold increased by 75%

Rank 3: Mobs have 50% more health, 25% more damage, spawns 20% more mobs. Tokens, MF and Gold increased by 150%

Rank 4: Mobs have 100% more health, 25% more damage, spawns 20% more mobs. Tokens, MF and Gold increased by 250%

Rank 5: Mobs have 250% more health, 50% more damage, spawns 50% more mobs. Tokens, MF and Gold increased by 500% (all mobs scaled to 80 in every dungeon)

The only damage that should not be increased is if the boss does unavoidable AOE/ticking damage.
This will help players who want a higher risk reward scheme.
You could also gain this from completing your dungeon on a previous rank.

I hope this make sense to everyone and if you could add Ideas that would be great.

So basically helping the elitist people be elitist and make it impossible for people with little experience or unlucky groups to get a decent group?

Not at all. That’s how an average works.

That is also how the first month idea works. Everyone is in the same pool, no elitist crap at the start. So you get you rank that way, the more dungeons you do the closer to your rank you will be, luck plays a smaller part. If you are worried just use the tool with guildies.

You start in the middle, with everyone else.
Yes if you are terrible you will be stuck with terrible players. if you leave all the time you won’t get to play with the people that actually try and finish, if you spend the whole time dead then yes you haven’t helped out, you will be pushed down.

It would mean the elitists do get an advantage, but surely if you are good at something you should get rewarded. That’s how it works, you put in the work you get the rewards.

And what if you are a great player but don’t have a guild?
There is always a risk you will end up with bad players in a PUG. And with this system pugs would most likely get more or less non-existent since gambling with a pug might mean your rating will get lowered because the other players made mistakes.

If you some how manage to get fail groups every time then that would be extremely unlucky as most dungeons are pretty achievable.
It would be a matter of balance, I agree.
For example leaving a group should be the biggest punishment.
Speed should only be a positive boost. not a negative (15mins to complete have some points towards an A grade, took you three or more hours? don’t worry thats not going to automatically get you an F. Just means you won’t have a time bonus. 0 deaths 14 res’s and last man standing twice would easily score you a B.

The res factor could mean one bad player actually helps you out, getting points of rezzing him a lot.

Honestly finding a guild isn’t hard. yeah it might take some looking but you should be able to find a group of your level.

This is a bad idea. If someone ranks very low you are placed with players who also have a lot of difficulties with the dungeon. Why would anyone want to join a dungeon if they know that 9 times out of ten they will be hitting their head against the wall? This idea essentially tells less skilled people that they should just give up on trying to get better at some point (because more likely than not you’ll be in a group that fails just come to the conclusion that all dungeons are terrible so there’s no point in running it. Which completely attacks new players who are learning the basics of the game).

If ranks were based on each individual dungeon run and you got better rewards based on the better you did such as gold or tokens (though I would remove the “time rank” since finishing quickly means you can run it more which is it’s own reward) I would be for it, but to use it as an LFG tool to divide the playerbase is a terrible idea.

Difficulty curve idea is fine though the rewards and difficulty would need some tweaking (rather than simply increasing base stats you could have stuff like “healing skills heal for half” or “enemies frenzy at 25%” or something).

I agree that punishing new players would be a bad idea.
This is why as I said you start in the middle.
The people that would be at the bottom would always be the people that left. If you are always leaving a group you soon won’t be invited to groups anymore. The did not finishers would be the players who sit in the bottom ranks.
If you combined this with small nerfs to dungeons it would make ranking even more important.

The lowest rank should be for abusive, quitters and people who just generally make people feel bad about stuff. They can have their own little corner of hell. Rank F

if C is the average for example, players of rank D will be with rank C. rank C players can get rank B. It should always try and put you in a group higher rather than lower.

I agree a divide could happen. it would just be unlikely.

I’m not saying have one without the other.
For example if a standard dungeon is all you can do, you will be with players who only do standard dungeons. If you want more of a challenge you will be with players who want the challenge.

I think the mistake I have made is letting everyone assume that lower ranks will be decided on how you play in the dungeon. That is not what I intended at all.

The skills like low deaths, ressing and speed can only take you up.
High deaths etc would not take you down.
Rank C should be where everyone sits. If you are good you go up to Rank B and if you are really good go to Rank A.

Rank F- players who always quit and are abusive.
Rank E- players who quit regularly, blaming everyone else.
Rank D-players who quit occasionally.
Rank C players 90% of the player base, always stick out the dungeon, may have quit once or twice.
Rank B- rarely quit and are pretty spot on with dungeon mechanics
Rank A- almost never quit, really good at dungeons, can do it fast and smooth always help out team mates and great attitude.

Hope this clears it up.

If rank F and E is only for players who leave, then rank D becomes the new lowest skill based rank (and how do you rank player attitude), and that’s just where people will find no point in continuing. If you start at C and have never done the dungeon before I doubt you will get a high score. If 90% of people are in rank C whats the point of even having ranks, they should just try to find a way to punish regular quitters/kickers.

Edit: And most elite CoF path 1 runs are bad enough. I can only imagine if every dungeon consisted of Rank A’s yelling at the teammates who brought their rank down because person X didn’t use the right utilities or screwed up just once on a mechanic which harmed the groups score (and like I said you can’t accurately score player attitude, it would consist of troll 1s or constant 5s).

tbh how long does it take to look up the dungeon and read bout it 2-3 mins at max?

Also most players I find can pick it up pretty quick especially if you ask in party chat. I literally spend 30 seconds writing tacs and most people can do it.

Finally that’s kinda how a bell curve works. The majority (90% was an exaggeration).

Again I think the point has been missed. you get a rank after each dungeon. your overall rank would be Rank D if you quit from dungeons.

Skill is only a factor for going up not down. Quiting is the way you go down.

say you ran 3 dungeons
quit all 3youd get rank F
did Average in 1, quit 2 your overall rank would be E
did Average in 2, quit 1 you’d get rank D overall
did Average in all 3 you’ll stay C
Did Badly in all 3 but finished them all rank C
Did Amazingly in 2 average in 1 rank B
Did average in 3 but spent a lot of time rezzing other players making sure they could get through rank B
Did Amazingly in all 3 and managed to speed run in rank A

That’s how attitude is checked, through team work. Rezzes, general healing etc. Making support more important.

Ranking is tricky. It depends too much on someone’s point of view. What one person thinks of as jerk behavior others could easily see as acceptable.

Perhaps the group finder could offer an option to indicate what type of dungeon run you are looking to do. An option for speed runs and another for story would probably be used the most.

The speed runs would be for the people who do dungeons a lot. They are the ones who follow the community defined path, take all the short cuts, expect the fights memorized, abuse the exploits, etc. Extra rewards of some kind could be offered for beating the clock. Anything from more laurels and karma to higher chances for exotics.

The story option isn’t limited to the Destiny’s Edge story run but also the explorable mode. Its for people who have never been there or what to take their time. Its for people who want to see what’s over there or around that corner that the speed people won’t ever touch. As a reward/incentive a few small chests/resource nodes could be sprinkled throughout the dungeon in the out of the way areas.

If you are in rank D you will never get a break. You will always be paired with players who either lack skill or quit. If someone gets stuck in rank D, even if they earnestly want to improve it will be quite a hassle if they are restricted to playing with these types of players. One could argue that you could just make your own group, but who would want to play with someone who has a rank D in that dungeon? I know I probably wouldn’t.

In high ranks you would probably see others attacking each other if someone’s poor play screws with their own rating; “your damage is to low”, “you failed to put your reflect up and it got me killed!”, “eww I don’t want class X in the party, it will mess with our score”.

I understand some of the things you are trying to accomplish, and I agree with things like rewarding skill with tangible rewards, however, I can only see this as leading to a fracturing of the playerbase and causing more harm than good, and I feel like there are better ways of accomplishing the idea of rewarding skill. Guess we will just have to agree to disagree.

Also attitude can’t be determined by teamwork. I’ve seen plenty of terrible players with great attitudes, as well as great players (who res, boon, etc) who just rage at people all day (though tbh I see far less of the later).